" I believe that a car is such a bad listening environment that 'sound quality' will be very
difficult to achieve (if at all, but you probably disagree )."

Well, yes and no...

Remember that for my ultimate sound quality purposes (i.e., competition) the stereo is played with the car parked, engine off, doors and windows closed.

When the car is in motion, I just crank the volume up enough to cover the road noise, and the quality is still pretty much there. So I do find it worthwhile to strive for sound quality, even in "such a bad listening environment." The downside of attempting sound quality in a moving vehicle is that music with a lot of dynamic range is not easy to listen to. The quiet sections are inaudible, and the loud sections tend to rattle the mirrors.

My ultimate plans are to put my really "important" music in uncompressed -- Rob says that eventually the empeg will be able to play .wav files directly, if I understand him correctly -- so my IASCA competition disk and a few individual tracks I use to impress unsuspecting onlookers will not go in as MP3's at all.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"